PeasandHappiness

I think routines are great! We have pretty established routines with our daughter too. When she was little I knew we could be out running errands from this time to this time and if we weren’t home by 11:30 I better have some snacks ready. If we aren’t home by 1:30 I better anticipate naptime grumpies. It helps with my anticipating what she needs. And when we are “off” for a family weekend away or special night out it’s easier to get her back on track too. Very early we started something that I LOVE now. We read a story every night at bed time. Tonight I read the story, Daddy snuggles for a few minutes after, says prayer, then does tuck in. Tomorrow morning I get up and do wake up, breakfast, dressing. Daddy will read story tomorrow night, I do snuggles, prayer, and tuck in. This way she is used to BOTH of us tucking her in separately so when one of us has a meeting she doesn’t melt at bedtime because Mommy’s not tucking her in. AND, I only have to be up super early and dressed for work before getting her up half the days of the week. Every-other Saturday I get to sleep as late as I want. And every-other Saturday she and I have special Silly Saturday pancake breakfast. Routines are WONDERFUL! Kids need structure. Someone recommended the book “Baby Wise” to us when I was pregnant. There’s some of it I don’t agree with and I wasn’t crazy about the next book in the series but it made a lot of good points about routines and how they are good for babies and kids because they know what to expect. It’s as much healthy for them as it is for us. I give that book as a gift to all my friends who are expecting.

I definitely think that routine and structure are important. But I’m one of those parents that isn’t great at following it. I’m kind of a fly by the seat of my pants person. In some ways, that helps me a lot as a parent, because the unexpected doesn’t throw me off, but I know it’s something I’d like to improve on. We have routine, but it doesn’t always follow a strict schedule. As far as bedtime goes, I am DESPERATELY trying to get ours earlier. My aim for bedtime is between 7:30 and 8:00 for Macartney(7) and Thatcher(5) and to have the two littler girls in bed before that. But that never happens most of the time the 3 older kids are in bed by 8:30 (sometimes later, sadly) and I put the baby to bed after that. I’m lucky that all my kids are phenomenal sleepers who will sleep anywhere and through the night. In general, all the girls will sleep in if they were up late. Thatcher will not. He is a morning person and is up first everyday, but usually no earlier than 7:00. Don’t get me wrong- I know sleep is very important. I’m just lucky that my kids are incredibly flexible, which gives our family a lot of flexibility. As first time parents, we made sure Macartney could sleep wherever we were and that made life so easy. All the kids are good about adapting their sleep to the situation. I’m also terrible at eating dinner at the same time every night. I don’t often leave myself enough time to cook and we get behind, which is probably what is throwing our bedtime schedule off. I need to get better at it. As far as the day goes, life is so much easier for me and my 4 small children, if I just stay home most of the time. The baby can nap and I don’t have to worry about the stress of going out with them. We just go to and from the school most of the time. When we’re not in school, I do take them on outings, but maybe once a week. And as a family we often go out on Saturday afternoons, after Geneva’s nap. I don’t feel trapped most of the time, except when Denver’s out of town for work. Then I do everything in my power to get them to bed early so I can relax!